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Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

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Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#81

Post by kaoD »

yongjik wrote: post #79
kaoD wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any attempt to give simple rules for this part of English grammar will fail, and will not generalize to other languages with articles Can you elaborate? (Genuinely interested: I like languages, don't know much about NLP). GP's explanation was just wrong, but articles are pretty well defined, easy to explain, and generalize well to other languages. - "The" (definite article) marks a noun that refers to a particular…

Consider: The Philippines The United States The Great Lakes the poor a means of production a number of hamsters the number of hamsters a shirt, but a piece of garment, and a pair of pants A lion chased him. (a particular lion) A lion is a ferocious beast. (lions in general)

> The Philippines, The United States, The Great Lakes

I see nothing wrong? The Philippine (Islands). The United (States). The Great (Lakes).

> the poor

This is a challenge for NLP but only due to the ellipsis. "the poor (people)", where "people" is elided. I don't think most native speakers realize "poor" is an adjective here.

> a means of production

> a number of hamsters, the number of hamsters

> a shirt, but a piece of garment, and a pair of pants

Sorry, non-native speaker here. What do you mean?

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#82

Post by avhon1 »

gweinberg wrote: post #56

I'm not sure how well this works in practice. Unless you already know a horse is a wonder dog and a hippopotamus is a water horse, when someone says "river wonder dog" will you know what he means?

Let's say Pat is an English speaker who has a strong understanding of its history and root words, but has never seen or heard of a hippopotamus until reading your comment. Without looking the word up, Pat can break down the word into the Greek roots híppos (horse) and potamós (river). From these roots, Pat can assume that a hippopotamus is a "river horse" -- a four-legged animal, probably a large mammal, that lives in or around rivers.

Let's say Jordan is a practiced speaker of Toki Pona who has never seen a hippopotamus, and has just now heard "river wonder dog" for the first time ever. Just like Pat, Jordan can infer that this refers to a four-legged animal, probably a mammal, definitely big or impressive, that spends lots of time in water. (The context of rivers is lost, so Jordan might assume that this creature lives on ocean shorelines, or even in open water.)

In either language, the creature's name uniquely identifies it to people who are already familiar with the animal, and gives a useful description to people who are unfamiliar with it.

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#83

Post by _abattoir »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #42
_abattoir wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of Toki Pona sounds like English anyway: wan: one tu: two meli: female, from Tok Pisin mewi, from "Mary" (as in, the Virgin) lukin: looking ale: all en: and ike: icky jaki: yucky insa: inside jelo: yellow kalama: clamor kama: come ken: can kule: color lape: sleepy lawa: law linja: line lili: little lupa: loop mani: money mu: moo musi: amusing/music nanpa: number nimi: name open: open pilin: feeling sama: same se…

I know, I've studied it. But I gave up because no one else cared to learn it with me.

There's a ton of active communities these days!

https://www.reddit.com/r/tokipona/

https://t.me/tokiponaTelegram

https://discord.gg/uzCUNE

https://discord.gg/VUd5Gt

https://tokipona.fandom.com/wiki/Where_is_Toki_Pona_used%3F

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#84

Post by yongjik »

kaoD wrote: post #81
yongjik wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider: The Philippines The United States The Great Lakes the poor a means of production a number of hamsters the number of hamsters a shirt, but a piece of garment, and a pair of pants A lion chased him. (a particular lion) A lion is a ferocious beast. (lions in general)

> The Philippines, The United States, The Great Lakes I see nothing wrong? The Philippine (Islands). The United (States). The Great (Lakes). > the poor This is a challenge for NLP but only due to the ellipsis. "the poor (people)", where "people" is elided. I don't think most native speakers realize "poor" is an adjective here. > a means of production > a number of hamsters, the number of hamsters > a shirt, but a pie…

> The Philippines, The United States, The Great Lakes

The point is that they are all names for a unique entity. There are no multiple Philippines - there's only one. Yet we should say "The Philippines", while we cannot say "The Switzerland."

Similarly, we aren't talking about "a particular group of united states among multiple such groups" - for example, nobody calls Germany "The United States", even if it's made of many states.

> "the poor (people)", where "people" is elided.

The problem with this analysis is that "the poor people" can be used to mean "these particular group of poor people we are talking about", but "the poor" can't - it's not a definite group of people.

E.g., "I met those refugees on the road, so I asked the poor a few questions." (??)

> a shirt, but a piece of garment, and a pair of pants

I'm saying: why can't we say "a garment" or "a pants"? (Hmm maybe we can say "a garment"? I'm not sure.) Seriously, a pants should be a thing: it's clearly one item. Has anyone ever seen someone wearing "a pant" (i.e., half a pair of pants)?

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#86

Post by bladedtoys »

yongjik wrote: post #17

I've said it before, but the problem with having only a hundred words is that they are the hardest one hundred words in any languages. To a foreign learner, easy words are hard, and hard words are easy. To someone learning English as a foreign language, "banish" is easy to understand: it has just one meaning, so once you memorize it, you can recognize it whenever it's used. "Turn out", on the other hand, has half a d…

The most common hundred words is challenging.

But maybe not the most common hundred concepts. "Turn out" is ambiguous but the notions of "expulsion" or "away" or "count" and "people" may not be.

It would be extremely useful to have a list of the most common core concepts shared by all cultures. Some maybe tricky like colors, but there must be a great many in common because it is possible to communicate after all.

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#87

Post by eximius »

fbreton wrote: post #74
iaabtpbtpnn wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have long wondered whether it would be possible to identify the most basic, core words of English, and construct a dictionary such that all definitions eventually reduce to those words. That way, a speaker of a foreign language could learn the meanings of the core words by translation into their native language, and then the process of learning a new word would be: look it up in the dictionary, and if there are any…

This exists : https://learnthesewordsfirst.com/ is a "multi layer dictionary". There are 360 base words, the very first ones are explained with images, then each word is defined using the previous ones. Then there's a list of 2000 more words defined using only base words. The last layer is a full dictionary whose definitions use only these 360+2000 words.

Do you know if this exists for learning other languages? Because this is exactly what I've been looking for as a language learning tool.

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#88

Post by coliveira »

Everyone should spend at least some time learning about ancient languages, such as Latin and Greek. If you do, you'll understand that all languages were originally like that, with very few words. The profusion of vocabulary we have nowadays were formed from a small kernel that was enriched with numerous suffixes, prefixes, and the combination of two or more words. For example, as we are closer to Latin, it is useful to learn prefixes such as "ex", "ab", "co", "pre", etc., and how they are used to form thousands of new words from latin origin.

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#89

Post by godelski »

spapas82 wrote: post #80
godelski wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In English "microscope" is "micro-scope", namely small-view. I find it funny that many don't understand that this is how languages work, until they learn other languages. Especially with English, which is a bastardization of a lot of other languages. For example, if you learn French basically anything that is fancy in English is just the normal term in French (e.g. "house" -> "mansion" or "famous person" -> "celebrit…

Actually microscope (like most similar words eg telescope, periscope, endoscope etc) is borrowed from greek: μικροσκόπιο, which is generated from μικρό + σκοπέω meaning small + look at.

Actually.... we are saying the same thing. Scope comes from Greek. See here [0][1].

As we're speaking about language "actually" would conventionally be used in a manner to correct someone. This is why there's jokes like "Where does the mansplainer get their water? The well, actually". But in this case, you did not contradict me in any way. So instead you should say: "Specifically, microscope (like...) is borrowed from greek..." This would create a less contentious comment and still give the added value that you are trying to contribute.

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/microscope

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scope

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#90

Post by kazinator »

anamexis wrote: post #78
jhbadger wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I studied German I was initially amused that the German word for television was "Fernseher" (far seer). How quaint! Until I stopped and thought for a moment what "television" literally means -- tele from Greek meaning "far", plus Latin "vision".

Ditto the Polish word for car, samochód, which translates literally to “self go,” and then.. automobile

Thanks for that ó, which I can copy and paste to make "jidósha": 自動車: self-move-vehicle.
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